My Lady Luck
by K. Elisabeth
Summary: A somewhat lengthy one-shot looking into Booth's gambling addiction and the strain and, eventually, growth it brings to he and Brennan's relationship.


**A/N:** I wrote this one-shot because I wanted to explore some of the reasons behind Booth's problem that we have learned bits and pieces about throughout the show. I really don't like overly-mushy Bones fics, so this isn't one of them, but it does fluff up sufficiently in the end, so don't worry. :) Let me know what you think!

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Dr. Temperance Brennan walked down the narrow hall towards Special Agent Seeley Booth's secluded office. Unlike her lab, which was cavernous and with vast glass panes allowing sunlight to pour over the living and dead, the FBI office reeked of bureaucracy. The halls were wide enough for two people to walk comfortably side by side, and the ceiling felt oppressively low, fluorescent lights filling the air with a flicker and a low hum.

Each door was hung with a nameplate, a marking of territory. Brennan didn't need the name plate to know which one was Booth's office—over the years she had visited him so often she could get there, as Booth would say, "backwards, blindfolded, and drunk as a skunk." She smiled inwardly recounting his colloquialisms, his 'Booth-isms'. They were as varied and colorful as his socks, as self-revealing as the belt-buckle that adorned his compulsively pressed pants—one of the mementos from his time in the military that he carried with him daily, and one of the least damaging of them.

That was the interesting thing about Booth, a man who had devoted his life to a branch of the government centered on conformity and precision. He kept his pants pressed, his shirts starched, his shoes polished, but they were no source of pride to him—rather, his pride was found in his crazy socks, his suggestive belt buckle, the woman on his pen who undressed herself when the pen was turned upright. These were pieces of him that rebelled, that stood out, that made him different. Brennan put no stock in psychology, so the subtle rebellious indicators and how they reflected the psychological pain Booth endured in the army were lost on her.

Engrossed in thought, she nearly walked past his office door, which was pushed shut, but not latched. Brennan put her hand on the door to push it open entirely, and heard him swear loudly as she did. She withdrew her hand for a moment, and decided to knock.

"Come in," Booth said, not bothering to look up from the computer screen. He looked up when Brennan walked in.

"Oh, hey," he said, sounding surprised to see her, which puzzled her as Booth was the one who had asked her to come to his office.

"You wanted to see me?" she asked, walking around to Booth's side of the desk. He hastily closed the window he had been looking at.

"What was that?" she asked.

"Nothing," Booth said curtly. "I got a warrant to search Marvin Debecki's house." He procured the folded piece of paper that she had requested earlier that morning.

"Great, thanks," she said, relieved that they might be able to close that case within the next twenty-four hours. All signs pointed to Debecki, and they were sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had that knife in his house.

"Yeah," he said distractedly, thoughts seemingly elsewhere. "No problem."

"So are we going to go now and do that?" Brennan asked.

"Er, yeah, I suppose we can," Booth said, seeming distracted.

"You 'suppose' we can go search the suspect's home for the knife he used to stab his girlfriend to death? Are you feeling alright?" Brennan asked. Booth rubbed his temples.

"Yeah I'm fine. Here, take the keys and go start the car," he said, handing her the keys to the SUV. "I'll be there in a minute." Brennan took the keys and, after giving him a long, curious look, left his office and made her way to the parking garage. She had turned on the vehicle and was sitting in the passenger's side seat—her seat—flipping through radio stations when she heard a tap on the glass. She looked up to see Booth's face in the window, and unlocked his door.

"Did you finish taking care of business?" Brennan asked, and Booth looked up in the same startled way he had in his office.

"Taking care of what?" he asked. Brennan smiled.

"It's okay, it's perfectly natural. Anthropologically speaking, _Homo sapiens_ are just like any other animal, with sexual desires that need to be—"

"Oh for God's sake, it wasn't porn!" Booth groaned, shaking his head as they pulled out of the garage. Brennan raised an eyebrow.

"So what are you being so secretive about?" Brennan prodded. Booth set his jaw and stared at the road ahead. Brennan shrugged and leaned back in her seat.

"Well alright then," she said, gazing out the window and watching tall city buildings morph slowly into suburban neighborhoods. They rode in the same silence on the way back from the Debecki house, Brennan resting an evidence bag containing a bloodstained steak knife on her lap. When they reached the Jeffersonian, rather than pulling into the parking garage as he normally would, Booth pulled up around the front of the building.

"You're not coming?" she asked.

"Debecki's in jail, you got your weapon, you don't need me for anything else on this case," Booth said. Brennan pursed her lips.

"Okay, I guess I'll see you soon then?" she said, and Booth nodded.

"Sure, see you," he said, pulling off as soon as Brennan shut the passenger's side door. She watched him drive off until he rounded the corner of the building, and wondered what distant storm he was weathering.

Several hours later, Brennan couldn't sleep. She was lying on her back, sheets flung off the bed, staring at the ceiling fan in the dark. It spun in a circle that was both distinct and indistinct, hardly visible in the blackness of the room but for a blur above her. Her bare legs shivered, but she let the sheets lay undisturbed on the floor.

She, Angela, Hodgins, and Cam had gone for celebratory drinks after successfully solving the Debecki murder case—sans Booth, who wouldn't pick up his phone—and she had allowed her mental preoccupation with Booth's behavior to be temporarily diluted by a considerable amount of alcohol. But now, hours later and sober, her mind had traced the old route back to the same place. Something was wrong with him, and it was unlike Booth to keep her at an emotional arm's length; usually it was the other way around.

Finally Brennan sat up and her feet hit the floor. She reached for a pair of jeans in the dirty clothes hamper and put them on—something she generally would never do when going out in public, but in the middle of the night some personal rules could waver. She slipped quietly out of her apartment, as if there were anyone else to wake up in her departure. Soon she was in her car, driving the less-familiar path towards Booth's home. Generally if they were in one of their homes, it was hers—Booth liked to visit, but she rarely stopped by his place. Before long she found herself parked in his driveway, wondering why she was there.

_It's not as if he is going to be awake at half past three,_ she thought to herself. _And if he is, he's not going to want company._ Nevertheless she approached his front door, her presence announced by a floodlight opening its bright eye. She lifted the rock under which his key was generally hidden, but did not find it. She tried inside the mouth of the frog statue, beneath the Virgin Mary next to the front door, and under the 'Welcome' rug. She finally found it after overturning half of the stepping-stones leading up to the front door. She smiled inwardly; for someone who was so good at comprehending the inner workings of the criminal mind, he sure couldn't hide a key.

Letting herself into the quiet house, she cursed her decision to come yet again. The house was silent, and if it weren't for his car out front, she would think unoccupied. She locked the door behind her and set the key on the kitchen counter, next to a stack of day-old mail. The stack of mail, she discovered after turning on the bulb over the stove for a bit of light, was next to a stack of old newspapers, which were laid next to the sink, packed to the gills with dirty dishes. Brennan frowned; this level of messiness wasn't in Booth's nature. Something was definitely upsetting him.

She crept into the living room, which was illuminated from the corner by the warm glow of a TV that had been left on and muted. Paula Dean was demonstrating the proper way to brush homemade barbeque sauce on a rack of ribs, mouthing silently to the camera. Five beer cans sat side by side on the coffee table, and Brennan picked up each one to confirm her suspicions: all empty.

Suddenly Brennan jumped out of her skin when she heard a loud swear from the adjoining room—Booth's bedroom. _So he's awake,_ she thought to herself, surprised that he had yet to notice or acknowledge her presence. There were no other sounds to suggest that he had company, and despite lacking any logical reason for doing so, Brennan approached the open doorway to his room. She poked her head in; he was sitting up in his bed in a pair of plaid boxers, all of the lights out, face shining blue from the screen of his laptop.

"Knock knock," she said, and this time it was Booth who jumped. Their eyes met from across the dark room, and he sighed heavily.

"Do you have to be so damn sneaky when you break into people's houses in the middle of the night?" he asked, slightly irked, slightly amused. Brennan smiled, leaning against the doorway.

"I didn't break in, I let myself in," she said. "You really aren't very good at hiding that key."

"Most people don't go snooping around for it," he grumbled, looking down distractedly at the computer screen. Brennan crossed the room in three strides, hopping lightly onto the unoccupied side of the bed and sidling up next to Booth. Before he could exit the screen, she caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a card table with several hands of cards laid out.

"Oh my God," she said, staring at him. "You're playing online poker."

"No I'm not," he said, shutting the lid of the laptop. "It was solitaire."

"I bet," Brennan scoffed, wrenching the laptop out of his grasp and flipping the lid open again. He did not stop her as she opened a browser window and clicked into his history—online poker, online blackjack, more online poker. She laid the computer aside and turned to face him. He stared determinedly at his feet outstretched in front of him, refusing to acknowledge her powerful gaze.

"Booth, you're gambling again," she said gently. He still did not acknowledge her words. She continued to stare, and he finally looked up; not at her, just into the blackness of the room, their only light coming from the now blank computer screen.

"Some," was all he said.

"Have you been going to your meetings?" Brennan asked.

"Yes," he replied brusquely.

"Obviously they're not working," Brennan said, voice an octave higher than she had expected it to be. Booth finally turned and looked at her, face hard and distant, unlike the man she was used to seeing.

"Obviously you have no idea what you're talking about," he spat, turning and hanging his legs over the side of his bed.

"Booth, you need to—"

"I need to what, huh? Quit? Get better help? See a shrink?" he said harshly into the dark, not looking at her. She pursed her lips and did not speak, but listened to his angry breathing.

"I didn't mean that. It's just, you know how bad this is for you," she said. His shoulders remained tense.

"You think I don't know that? That first it's the checking account, then savings, then it's the boat, the car, the house? It's my time with Parker, my parental rights, everything goes. I know that, Bones," he said, his volume increasing until he was yelling, causing Brennan to flinch. "I know that!" His last words rang out in the quiet house, loudly enough that his neighbors probably heard them too.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just… I don't know… I suppose…"

"You know, it's not just money," he said suddenly, not allowing her to formulate whatever lost thought she had been trying to grasp. She stared at his back, puzzled, waiting for him to continue.

"It's not just money," he repeated. "You can gamble with money, you can bet money on chance, on luck. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and you go home at the end of the day if you didn't bet it on a bad hand. Sometimes it's money, but sometimes it's not. When we were out there, out in that desert… that God-forsaken desert… nobody could hear us, and we gambled too. We gambled with God, Bones. We gambled with life. Every day was a gamble. Every day we drew our cards when we put on our combat gear and stepped out into enemy territory. When we rode into the city, we gambled. When we walked into an area to secure it, we gambled. When we had that feeling, that déjà vu feeling like this has happened before and you know what shit is about to go down before it does… but you go in anyway, we gambled. We put all of our chips in one pile. And some of us lost, Bones." He stopped and took in a deep breath and let it out in a loud, long sigh. She was unsure what to say, so instead she said nothing, and allowed him to continue when he was ready.

"War is like cards, Bones. Out there, it's like playing a game, like gambling on a hand, but you're playing with someone who cheats. And when they cheat, you lose, and when you lose, you die. I knew so many of them…" He trailed off, looking up at the ceiling, hands grasping the edge of the mattress. He ticked off the list of names in his head: Monroe, Wilson, Adams, Johnson, Taylor, Alder. Brennan reached across the bed and touched his arm, and the warmth of her fingers snapped him out of reverie.

"I knew them. They were my responsibility, we were each other's responsibility. When one of us made a bad bet, bet on a bad hand, we all lost. One stupid move is all it takes. One bad hand is all it takes. After that, Bones, when you gamble every day of your life, on your life… when you gamble to live, it's hard to stop." He let out another long, shuddering sigh, and was quiet. Brennan wasn't sure what to say, so she was quiet too.

Finally, when enough tension and pain was crackling through the room to start a fire, Brennan scooted across the bed, sitting on her knees directly behind Booth. She laid her hands on his shoulders, feeling his tense body tremble, and rubbed small circles on his neck with her thumbs. His knotted muscles felt like rocks beneath her small, soft hands, but they seemed to melt under the repetitive motion. She moved down his neck to his shoulders and upper back, using the rise of her palm to work deep into the rigid muscles. She felt his heart rate slow, his haggard, gasping breaths give way to slower, deeper ones.

"Bones, you know the term 'lady luck', right?" Booth whispered.

"Not really," Brennan admitted.

"If you're doing good, if you got a good hand, you'd say that lady luck was helping you out that night. If you lost big, lady luck was cheating with the other guy," he explained.

"So, a personification of the risk involved in a game based on chance?" Brennan asked. She saw Booth's head dip in a nod.

"You know who you are, Bones?" he asked. She shook her head, even though he was faced the opposite direction and could not see the motion.

"Who?" she finally asked.

"You're my lady luck, Bones. And you never cheat with the other guy; you're always on my side."

He reached over his shoulders and found her hands as they worked his muscles, grasping her hands in his. She stopped massaging and squeezed his hands, running the pads of her thumbs back and forth along the tops of his hands. He slowly pulled her arms around his neck, and she leaned against his solid form and wrapped her arms around him, laying her soft cheek against his hot, stubbly one. She felt the wetness of his face and knew they were tear tracks, but chose not to acknowledge the fact.

He began to rock slightly and she rocked with him, still holding onto him, face pressed against his, now feeling her own hot, wet tears.

The next day she would rationalize to herself that she was responding to an anthropological imperative: one member of a species saw another suffering, and responded accordingly to that distress. When she laid a soft kiss against his temple, when they curled up in the center of his bed, still holding hands. When they allowed their breathing to fall in sync, her face buried in his shoulder, and slept.

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**A/N:** Like it? Hate it? Let me know! :)


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